


The Pen in Their Hands

by pendrecarc



Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: 5+1 Things, Age of Sail, Epistolary, F/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Five letters that were written, but were never sent, aboard H.M.S.Laconia. (And one that was.)
Relationships: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth
Comments: 25
Kudos: 158
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Pen in Their Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cefyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cefyr/gifts).



_Laconia_ , docked in Plymouth  
20 March 1808

Miss Elliot,

I imagine your face changing as you receive this: with surprise after two years of silence, but I hope not with displeasure. If curiosity and some remnant of good feeling between us win out over a natural reluctance to revisit a painful chapter of your history, I beg the opportunity to apprise you of the recent changes in my situation, which may be of importance to you.

If they do not win out, if none of that good feeling remains, or if your own situation makes correspondence between us improper, I beg instead that you will discard this letter unread.

Shortly after I left Shropshire in the year six I was ordered to take command of the sloop _Asp_ , a small and rather ancient but still (I thank God and the Admiralty) seaworthy vessel of 18 guns, and to proceed without the loss of a minute to the Mediterranean, there to provide escort to merchant ships under His Majesty’s protection. These early errands were respectable but by no means glorious; yet I had the notable advantages first of a willing and able crew, whose familiarity with the sloop and one another meant the breaking-in of my own command did not coincide with the breaking-in of all my subordinates; and second the fortune of seeing action several times, under auspicious circumstances, which brought the _Asp_ to the favorable attention of the commandant. I was released from escort duty and instructed to harry the enemy up and down the Spanish coast, a prime opportunity for distinguishing myself in a minor way; and more to the point for the capture of several prizes, with all the reward that follows this happiest of sailors’ lots. Within the span of several months I achieved a comfortable degree of financial security, and the good opinion of the senior captain in those waters, whose preferment secured me several more profitable cruises.

We spent the majority of the year seven in the mid-Atlantic and the West Indies, making a severe nuisance of ourselves to all the enemy privateers who came our way. Early this year, while sailing home to Plymouth, we took the _Occitanie_ , a French 28-gun frigate, after an extended chase along the 42nd latitude, and brought her safely into harbor. In consequence of this last, I received my promotion and have been posted to the frigate _Laconia_.

The material advantages of a post-captain’s position are I think well known to you, if not from your own understanding of the Navy then from the representations I made to you and others concerned with your well-being when last we spoke. If they escape your memory I will repeat, in brief: the likelihood of his receiving a ship in time of war, and daily pay even if he finds himself shipless in time of peace; a respectable pension to his widow, should he be so fortunate as to marry, but unfortunate enough to lose his life; and if he keeps it, the guarantee of proceeding steadily up the Naval List until he raises his Admiral’s ensign.

To these universal blessings I personally add a comfortable sum of three and a half thousand pounds in —’s Bank, London.

I am, at the moment, closer to being in a state of perfect liberty than I have been since I left England. I am granted a month’s shore leave while we refit and intend to spend as much of it as possible visiting my sister, who lodges in London while her husband is stationed in the East Indies. She is the best sort of woman, kind and good-humored and certain in her own mind.

I have not yet decided, whether to visit my brother as well. It may be that I imposed too long on his hospitality when last I was in the country.

If you have read this far I reassure myself you take some interest in the progress of my career. Perhaps it is only that you are diverted by the flagrant boasting in the preceding paragraphs; you cannot be blamed for that! I have not shown away so shamelessly since my last dispatch to the Admiralty, and I assure you that genre of correspondence is not one to encourage humility.

You must take my meaning—indeed you must have taken it from the first line of this letter, you who always saw straight to the heart of any topic, who seemed to satisfy all the hidden desires of my heart before I could name them to myself.

Anne. I imagine your face reading this, in a hundred different moods: joy, apprehension, caution, eagerness, disgust. Perhaps you sit cool and collected, a wealthy housewife secure in her place—and even titled, to fulfill your father and your protectress’ fondest wish—reading with remote pity the words of a fool determined to reopen a wound. But I think not. I think even if this comes too late, if you are well beyond the considerable reach I have now attained, there will be some warmth in your expression, perhaps tears in your clear eyes—for I believe you did love me then, and will still look compassionately on me now.

But that is not what I hope. Shall I tell you what I hope?

I hope you sit in the morning-room at Kellynch, where I remember you used to go before your father and sisters had risen. I hope you have been dreading their company, with all its demands and pressures, and that this letter has fallen into a temporary solitude. I hope it comes to disturb you, to relieve you, and above all to gladden you—that you both knew it must come and feared it would not, because I confess I no more wish you to have believed me inconstant than I would be taken for granted.

There—you have it, my pride and my selfishness and my longing, laid out on a page before you. I cannot end this letter as I started it, as I meant to continue it, as a businesslike proposal of domestic felicity. I can only say instead that all the pleasures and anxieties of a life at sea have not kept me from thinking of you daily. That I am still yours if you will have me, if your will and your heart can rise above your family’s pride.

A word from you, the briefest line on a scrap of paper, will be enough to lay claim once again to—

—F. W.

***

***

_Laconia_ , off the Isle of Lewis  
1 September 1809

Miss Elliot,

I write, not knowing whether this letter finds you still at Kellynch, and whether its sender is anything to you but a vague memory not, I hope, associated entirely with the unhappy circumstances of our parting.

My reasons for initiating this correspondence now, after so long a period of mutual silence, may require some explanation.

This summer I have been engaged in a cruise off the Western Isles in the company of Captain Harville of the _Marguerite_. Ours is an ideal situation in many ways—first with respect to prize money, which we accumulate at gratifying speed; second with respect to Harville’s friendship, which I have valued extremely since we were midshipmen together on the _Invincible_. I believe I had occasion to mention him to you once or twice. And finally with respect to the _Laconia_ herself, and her crew.

The first several months after I took her we saw less action than I could have wished. We were assigned the sort of blockade duty that is so necessary to the prosecution of war, so reassuring to the wives and families of the sailors engaged in it, and so d----d tedious for the men thus engaged. Furthermore I had been given a crew of very raw hands, nearly all of them landsmen who could not tell stem from stern. I imagine you smiling at you read this, and chiding me with gentle good humor for achieving a long-desired ambition and, without the slightest gratitude for my fortune, turning at once to aggrieved impatience! You are too right; but you must understand it is the nature of the service, to always be anticipating the next command, the next prize, the next promotion. And it is also I believe the nature of my character, that I should enjoy the first sight of my name in the captain’s list for only the time it took my friends to drink my health; and immediately after, I should be wondering how long I must wait for it to rise in seniority.

I had occasion, the last time I dined at Captain Croft’s table, to wonder whether this is a phenomenon particular to men of the Navy; or whether it extended not only to other professions, but to the other sex. Do women feel it, and what form do those ambitions take? The desire always for another child, if married; or if unmarried, the desire for an offer? Might a young lady see a proposal in the nature of one of our minor naval engagements, a brief skirmish in which she may triumph over the enemy, and refuse him to sail away in chase of the next, better opportunity?

My sister, who was present at that dinner, chided me severely for being offensive, and unimaginative besides, in my assessment of women’s ambitions. No doubt I was. I left the table feeling more thoroughly a scrub than I had since leaving the midshipman’s berth; but it was not a feeling that lasted long, as the moment I returned to my own ship I had at once a dozen matters of supreme importance to address, and only two days later we saw our first really hard action. But this outcome only serves to emphasize my point—how do you bear it? The inaction, your confinement to the domestic sphere. The restraint you must exhibit even there, not to reveal too much of your feelings until you are confident in your expectations, lest you be accused of an indiscretion. Where do you turn, when suffering embarrassment or disappointment? What distractions have you, when you may not run away to the far side of the world, or order your gun-crews to begin a shattering broadside, or fight your way through a heavy gale?

No doubt here, too, I betray my ignorance and condescension. But I remember you as I knew you in Somersetshire, all gentle modesty, and the impression that first drew me to you—a sense of something tamped down, a longing for the wider world, all hemmed in by those around you. And when I think of my own feelings on leaving you, and compare the relief I found in activity to the routine in which I imagine you still confined— 

But I see I have lost the train of my thought.

Shortly after the dinner and the action I mentioned, I received new orders, and happily joined Harville in the Northern Atlantic. Since then life at sea has been all an energetic captain could wish, with a crew growing daily more practiced in its discipline, in its seamanship, and in its gunnery; and with a friend nearby. In my occasional moments of high-mindedness I find it gives a relish to our victories, to share them with Harville. Certainly there is more relish at my dinner-table than there would be in only the company of subordinates, who are obliged to speak only when spoken to, and never to volunteer too strong an opinion of their own. But Harville’s genuine, even unselfish pleasure in a prize is a pleasure to me as well. He is lately married, you see, and considers each successful execution of his duty in light of what it may do for his wife and family. His is an excellent example, and reminds me that ambition for oneself is no virtue; but ambition for _others_ , is in its way laudable. And I have no-one to think of but myself.

So I write, wondering whom you think of, and whether there is any room in those thoughts for a post-captain with more fortune than humility, nothing of value on which to spend the former, and no-one to teach him the latter.

We expect to be recalled to England very soon, and to receive a good span of shore leave. I had thought of going into the country.

Your servant,

Frederick Wentworth

***

***

_Laconia_ , in the Indian Ocean, somewhere around the 30th parallel and the 96th meridian  
14 April 1811

Anne,

We are becalmed: have not moved even a sea-mile in the last ten days, and have been at quarter rations of water for the last three. There is still a great supply of salt pork, but this is not the consolation you might imagine.

I suppose, if this letter ever reaches you, it will be by the services of some kind captain come upon a ghost-ship floating in our place, after we are all lost to thirst. We buried the first poor soul dead of the heat just yesterday, and the surgeon tells me we may expect several more tomorrow if matters continue as they are. Words cannot covey the desperate oppressiveness of the air hanging hot and heavy about us, with not a breath of wind to stir the sails; or the oppressiveness of our confinement, on what for all our pride in her is really a very small home for two hundred men.

And nothing to do. That is the worst of it! If there was any hope of land nearby we might have a go with the oars; but our master is a prime navigator and says we might row several days and nights without passing the smallest pile of unwatered, unwooded rock. We keep to the usual schedule of watches, we holystone the deck, we beat to quarters; there is only routine now, and discipline, to keep some heart in the men. But there is no _use_ in any of it to improve their situation, and very little to keep heart in their captain.

I can only thank God for my officers, who bear up under it with admirable fortitude. They are a fine and necessary example to the men, and leave me little excuse for self-pity. You would like Benwick, I think; he is my first lieutenant, sent to me not two months ago. I should never have asked for a voyage like this one to try his abilities or our new working relationship, but he weathers it all with great resolve. A sensible, and also a sensitive man; a great reader; his conversation is not the usual sort one hears in the gun-room, but I find it a relief and a distraction, a reminder that there is a civilized world somewhere beyond the great mass of still ocean and dead air, where there is music to be heard and there are books to be read.

I lay awake last night, listening for the creak of the timbers that might mean the ship had begun to stir, and remembered that concert we heard together: that quartet, something of Mozart’s or Haydn’s, not very well-played I thought, but you remarked on the uncommon agility and grace of the ‘cello. I was forced to concede the point; that I had overlooked it entirely while I was finding fault with the higher, showier voices. And lying there I thought how you would find some solace in this misery.

It has been nearly five years since I saw your face. My memory seems to hold the curve of your cheek just as it holds the curve of the _Laconia_ ’s keel. I know what she would feel like, if I could run my hand along her length; I can imagine the soft warmth of your skin under my thumb.

But it has, as I say, been nearly five years. I cannot say for certain, whether your dark eyes are exactly the shade they appear in my memory, or the timbre of your voice quite as clear and resonant.

I must go. There are men to be visited in the sick-bay, and a cheerful manner to be put on; hands to be ordered about their daily useless business, and confidence to be worn like a mask. But if we come through this, if there is blessed rain to relieve us or, God willing, a breeze, I will write you at last—I will burn this unsent and find better words than these, and write you not in wretchedness but in hope.

\- F. W.

***

***

_Laconia_ , Gibraltar  
30 June 1813

Miss Elliot,

A packet arrived today, bearing new orders and the mail. Such occasions excite great suspense aboard the _Laconia_ ; though not with respect to the orders, for we are a jaded lot, quite used to being shuffled about at the whims of the Admiralty. However, they mean a new edition of the _London Gazette_ , and they mean the possibility of letters from home. These are both of particular interest to my first lieutenant.

It is wonderful, to see the sense of community that forms aboard a man of war—at least, aboard a happy one. Each of us dependent on the others for our profession, for the maintenance of a comfortable home, for all our conversation and entertainment. And, naturally, for our lives. There is great good feeling here for Benwick, who is well liked among the men—he has their respect of course, but not the God-like awe that is granted their captain and keeps _him_ necessarily at more of a remove—and who has been waiting this year or more to hear of his advancement, long-delayed and long-deserved, to the rank of commander. With every post the crew holds its collective breath, and expels its collective disappointment, as his hopes are raised and deferred yet again.

He has more than the usual reasons to regret this pattern. He has been engaged these last six months to the sister of my friend Captain Harville, and waits only upon the financial security of prize-money and the professional security of promotion for the marriage. This morning he did at least have the consolation of a letter from her.

I had the great pleasure of making Fanny Harville’s acquaintance this past winter, during the period when this understanding grew between her and her betrothed; for me it was a pleasure much anticipated after years hearing her brother sing her praises. Indeed, viewed objectively, she is a lovely girl, most engaging manners, with a quick penetrating mind and a ready smile. But hearing Benwick join his voice to Harville’s song, I have discovered an odd contrary instinct in myself. I have said in the privacy of my own thoughts: Her face is well enough to look at, but has not nearly the degree of beauty Benwick will insist upon. Her conversation is lively but lacks something in depth. Her disposition is sweet, but hampered by a certain reserve.

This has for the last half year been a source of some bewilderment to me, that I should take such obstinate pleasure in finding unreasonable fault with a woman whose virtues should be a joy to me, for Benwick’s sake. And it came to me this morning, as I sorted Benwick’s mail from my own and felt a profound and ludicrous dissatisfaction with the results, that this contrary instinct has nothing to do with anything that Fanny Harville is, but everything to do with who she is not.

Laugh at me, Miss Elliot! I have been laughing at myself this hour and more. Is it not pitiful, what I have told myself for years: That you are forgotten? That a scrawled note in the Indian Ocean was a maudlin aberration born of desperate circumstances? That I am far too wise to compare every woman I meet with my image of you, which—time and memory being what they are—likely bears no more resemblance to the original, than a ship of the line bears to a merchant vessel? That every time I take aboard a stack of post and find in it no response to any of those lamentable letters I have written and never sent, I feel neither disappointment nor resentment?

See what a fool you make of me, that I make of myself! And worse than a fool. When I look back at my meditations on your circumstances, as I imagined them to be—preserved all these years at Kellynch like a specimen under glass—I can hardly tell whether those thoughts gave me more pleasure or pain. Contemptible! Once I was justly aggrieved, once I was truly disappointed. But now it is only bitter indulgence.

No more, then. It is good to know myself. I shall have no patience with it any longer. I must turn my mind fully to the making of Benwick’s name, to the good of the service, and to my own advancement. Even to finding a wife. I will not deceive myself that this letter will reach you, any more than the others have done.

Now quite his own servant,

\- F.W.

***

***

_Laconia_ , Plymouth  
4 August 1814

Miss Elliot,

I write in some haste, as I leave within the hour to travel overland to Portsmouth, where I must deliver the most unhappy news to a dear friend. I will not go into the circumstances here, save to say that they have caused me to think a great deal in a short period of time on happiness and unhappiness, on missed opportunities, and on all the long-held wishes of my heart.

I will be in Portsmouth some weeks, but after that I hope for an extended period of shore leave and the ability to spend it as I choose. Of my plans, I will say only that nothing would please me better than to see you. Your reply may find me at the Twin Gables in Portsmouth.

That is my boat being lowered. I have no more than a few minutes to choose whether to send this. I have found the boldness to write the Admiralty requesting a leave of absence, and to run off without having been granted it; but even now I cannot say whether it will carry me as far as posting this letter, or if this is only another passing impulse in a moment of strong emotion.

\- Frederick Wentworth

***

***

_Laconia_ , Lisbon  
12 April 1816

Mrs. Wentworth,

I had only just sent off my last letter with the dispatches when I was invited aboard the flagship for dinner. The Admiral informs me I am not to be sent to the North American station as we had supposed, but am to proceed to Malta, and join up with the Mediterranean Fleet. I will be in this part of the world, with its advantageous climate and its excellent society at all our ports, for several months at least.

Anne, why do you not come out and join me? I will write to Croft and Harville, that they may compete for the opportunity to bring you to me; Sophia will mourn the loss of her favorite house-guest, but you must tell her she has had sole possession of you for quite long enough.

I long to for you to see the Mediterranean. More than that, I long to see you _in_ the Mediterranean: your profile turned out over a turquoise sea, the fire of the sunset reflected in your eyes.

I must address this now, and catch the dispatch-ship before it makes the tide. Only write at once and let me know when I may expect you. I send this with my love, in the certain knowledge you will see it soon.

Yours,

\- Frederick Wentworth

**Author's Note:**

> I loved your prompts! Particularly the idea for the canon divergence AU, suggested at the end of the book, where Wentworth did in fact write to Anne when he was made post. It seemed like the perfect jumping-off-point both for epistolary fic and 5+1, which I was delighted to see you like. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it, and happy Yuletide!


End file.
